Daily News Digest April 25, 2022

Daily News Digest Archives

Humanity Will Not be Covid Free, Until the Vaccines, Like the Salk Polio Vaccine, are Free For the Whole World

Images of the Day:

The United States of Hypocrisy: Revisiting the Monroe Doctrine In refusing to acknowledge Russia’s concerns about NATO expansion, the Biden administration is engaging in hypocrisy!

The 1% Openly Control ‘Elections’

Another Example Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capilalism Ws Aware of the Danger of Cornovavirus Threat Over 5 Years Ago and Did Nothing!:  Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter  Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading  Racism,  War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The future of Humanity Is Now At stake!Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”, is Still True for Today’s World!During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: 1.Austerity,2. Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3.  The Iron Heel!    For Decades, Blacks Have Been Subjected to The Iron Heel!   Currently, the US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply It to Everyone!

Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In  Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!

Always Remember:  That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing,  the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. —  The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!

Democracy?: As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%,  Only the 1% Voted For Austerity!   The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1%, Who Profit From Austerity!!  Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.!   Socialism Means True Democracy, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!

Videos of the Day:

Jailed for a Crime She Didn’t Commit, Dreama Caldwell is Now Taking on the System After facing a $40k bail for a crime she didn’t commit, Dreama Caldwell is organizing at the grassroots to build working-class power in rural North Carolina.

Quotes of the Day:

DONETSK, Ukraine — The Ukrainian Army appears to have fired cluster munitions on several occasions into the heart of Donetsk, unleashing a weapon banned in much of the world into a rebel-held city with a peacetime population of more than one million, according to physical evidence and interviews with witnesses and victims. — Ukraine Used Cluster Bombs, Evidence Indicates 2014)

It’s not some far away dystopia. It’s happening now. Google, Facebook, and a tiny handful of other Big Tech giants control the overwhelming majority of traffic to news websites like Common Dreams. They use hidden algorithms to determine which news sources to prioritize in search results and news feeds–increasingly, these algorithms have prioritized corporate news sites while choking off traffic to independent outlets like Common Dreams. We’ve always had a secret weapon that has allowed us to continue even while Google and Facebook have become ever more aggressive about suppressing us. That secret weapon is you – our readers.

 United States:

The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Reublicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a  Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War!  Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from th poor and gives to the Rich. Taxthe Rich!  — They Can Afford to Pay! 

Barry Sheppard: U.S. Hypocrisy On War Crimes  The U.S. has charged Russia of war crimes in its invasion of Ukraine, and brought those charges to the International Criminal Court (ICC).     The invasion itself was criminal, and a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty. Any invasion of another country is now considered a war crime under international treaties.     One of the charges against Russia is that it has used internationally banned cluster bombs that indiscriminately kill civilians.     This has not yet been proved by physical evidence on the ground.     However, an article in the April 18 New York Times, based on one of its reporters on the ground in Ukraine, says the Ukrainian military used cluster bombs against its own people in villages that were under Russian occupation at the time, villages that Russia subsequently withdrew from.

Chomsky on Global Response to Biden Calling Putin a War Criminal: ‘Takes One to Know One’ The dissident says that while outraged by Russia’s war on Ukraine, much of the rest of the world is reacting to U.S. condemnation by asking,      “Why should we get involved in your hypocrisy?”      World-renowned dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky highlighted the hypocrisy of U.S. government leaders denouncing and demanding accountability for war crimes allegedly committed by Russian forces waging war on Ukraine during an interview published Thursday.

Roaming Charges: Runaway Sons of the Nuclear A-Bomb The US hasn’t won a major war since dropping nukes on Japan. It’s lost two– Vietnam and Afghanistan–and fought to bloody stalemates in two others: Iraq and Korea. But winning wars is no longer the point, prolonging them is–that’s where the money’s made and what the fog of war is meant to obscure. This goes for proxy wars too, which is bad news for Ukrainians, who would benefit from a negotiated settlement of the war but will be pushed by western politicians and their financial backers in the weapons industry to fight until the last check for javelin missiles bounces. …

• The Pentagon and its contractors want a prolonged war in Ukraine. But they don’t want the Russian military to be exposed as the inept force it appears to be: a force of understandably reluctant conscripts manning rusting hardware firing inaccurate missiles and already running low on ammo and parts after two months of indecisive action. That would be very bad for the procurement business, which requires the threat of an alleged “weapons gap” to thrive.
• Nearly 120 years later people are still arguing over what started WW I. But there’s almost unanimous agreement that the cause of WW II (in Europe at least) was the way WW I ended and the punitive sanctions imposed on Germany at Versailles. They would still be fighting WW I if the negotiators of the armistice had to agree on what caused the war. Perhaps they still are…
• Similarly, people will debate what triggered Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But the real question now is how it will end, who will negotiate the peace, how many people will die before it concludes and how long it will be before the next war starts–since the end of one war invariably sows the seeds for the next.
• There have been so many atrocities committed by both sides since the war began–the butchery in Bucha, the ghastly trolling by Ukrainians of Russian military families with photos of their dead relatives, the destruction of Mariupol, the sinking of the Moskva–that these horrors will become the stumbling blocks to a negotiated settlement and the pretext for the next war. The debate over the Minsk Accords is so much quaint ancient history now.
• Just glancing at this morning’s Defense Post headlines: Russia Strikes Lviv; Pakistan strikes eastern Afghanistan; Turkey strikes northern Iraq; Kyiv’s allies moving new armor and weapons to Ukraine…the world is at a very perilous point, not even factoring in the global threat of climate change.

Beneath the Fog of Ukraine: A Troubling Current Events Update on the US “Homeland” And the Nominees Were…A month or so ago, I put up an informal online social media survey on what events could possibly knock the war carnage in Ukraine off the top of the cable news cycle. My own and others’ morbid leading nominees went something like this:

• a US mass shooting of epic proportions.
• a new covid surge.
• an extreme weather event rooted in climate change.
• the shooting of a US-American Black person, probably a young man, by a white police officer caught on video, leading to protests.
• a terrorist attack on US soil, probably committed by white nationalists.
• an economic collapse.
• partisan and cultural (race and gender) conflict over Joe Biden’s nomination of a Black female to the US Supreme Court.
• A Joe Biden stroke or heart attack, leading to the disastrous elevation of the politically inept and transparently neurotic Kamala Harris to the oval office, sparking a massive right-wing rebellion (my favorite).
• Kamala Harris seeks behavioral therapy to stop her habit of inappropriate laughing. 

The ‘Supremes’ Strike Again: AOC Slams Supreme Court for Limiting Puerto Ricans’ Access to Disability Checks Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) pushed back on a Supreme Court decision that limits Puerto Ricans’ access to government benefits on Thursday, condemning the decision for advancing the U.S.’s colonialist grip over the territory.     In an 8 to 1 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Puerto Ricans do not have the constitutional right to access the same government disability benefits as people living in the U.S. mainland. The ruling rejected an appeal from a Puerto Rican resident who was sued for $25,000 by the government for receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments when he moved to Puerto Rico.

Environment —Ecosocialism or Ecocide!:

The 1% Choose Global Warming!: What’s Needed to Fight Climate Crisis Is Clear. The Powerful Are Preventing It. Republicans, Manchin, Sinema, Biden, capitalism and war are obstructing climate action this Earth Day.     This may be the most frustrating Earth Day in the 50-year history of the celebration. At no other time have we been faced with such acute peril from anthropogenic climate disruption. At no other time have more people been personally invested in making the changes necessary to create a sustainable world.      At no other time has actually making those changes in the halls of power seemed more challenging.     This is the agony of the paradigm shift, of the great change that must happen even in the implacable face of vast, entrenched wealth.      Those who believed Big Oil, Big War, and all the other pillars of this presently collapsing pillage-and-plunder system were going to see all the fires, floods and storms, and say, “Wow, this sucks and might make it harder for us to make money in 20 years, something must be done!” were badly fooling themselves. Today’s system is about MONEY NOW, about wringing the last few coppers from the bones of the laboring class while there is still time on the clock.

10 Reasons Why Climate Activists Should Not Support Nuclear The world needs safe, non-exploitive technologies. Nuclear doesn’t qualify.

1. Nuclear is dangerous. Building many new nuclear power plants around the globe means a higher risk of unpredictable Fukushima-type accidents. We know more extreme weather events are locked in due to climate change, adding to the danger as time passes.
2. Nuclear is dangerous. Building many new nuclear power plants around the globe means a higher risk of unpredictable Fukushima-type accidents. We know more extreme weather events are locked in due to climate change, adding to the danger as time passes.
3. Nuclear is slow. Nuclear power plants take a very long time to build. Since 1981, the median construction time for nuclear reactors has been 7 to 10 years. In 2017, two-thirds of new nuclear power plants being built had long delays.
4. Nuclear is not green. The claim that nuclear is emissions-free relies on not telling the whole story. If you measure greenhouse gas emissions over the whole process — mining, refining, construction, decommissioning and waste storage — then nuclear is far worse for the climate than renewables.
5. Nuclear is not renewable. There’s not enough high grade uranium available for nuclear power to make a big dent in carbon emissions. If we trebled the number of nuclear plants worldwide recoverable uranium reserves would run out in a few decades.
6. Nuclear is expensive. Producing energy with nuclear power is a lot more expensive than renewables. Nuclear power’s already high construction costs routinely blow out, going billions over budget. Britain’s Hinkley Point C reactor cost estimates have risenfrom £18 billion in 2016 to £22-£23 billion today. It won’t open until June 2026 at the earliest.
7. Nuclear power means nuclear weapons. A big rollout of nuclear power would mean a big expansion of fissile materials that could be used for nuclear weapons. It would multiply the facilities such as enrichment and reprocessing plants that these weapons need. The spread of civil nuclear programs to more countries would make more states capable of quickly producing nuclear weapons.
8. Nuclear waste is forever. The most hazardous nuclear waste decays so slowly that it won’t be safe for millions of years. Ramping up nuclear power will produce a lot more waste and there is no safe way to store it. It’s irresponsible to make this waste a problem for our descendants.
9. Uranium mining is unsafe. There is no safe way to mine uranium or other radioactive elements. Building more nuclear power will result in more leakage of radioactive materialsinto the environment and more workers exposed to unsafe conditions and preventable deaths.
10. Nuclear means dispossession. About 70% of the uraniumused for nuclear power plants worldwide is mined from the lands of Indigenous minorities. For too long, Indigenous peoples’ lands and culture have been treated as nuclear industry sacrifice zones. We should not support any expansion.

Nuclear Power Is Not Clean or Green! No contemporary energy source is as environmentally irresponsible, imposes such a high liability on taxpayers, or is as dangerous as nuclear power. Industry efforts to “greenwash” nuclear energy make a mockery of clean energy goals. Although nuclear reactors do not emit carbon dioxide, promoting nuclear risks to reduce greenhouse emissions is the classic jump from the frying pan into the fire! Experience with large fossil-fired electrical generating units, as well as in all process industries, shows that plants begin to deteriorate with age after approximately 10 years of operation. Similar phenomena will prevail for nuclear plants, and it is reasonable to postulate that their availability will be affected, as will their safety, if appropriate measures are not taken. It is evident that the average age of power reactors in the IAEA’s Member States is increasing. (See accompanying graphs.) By 2000, more than 50 nuclear plants will have been providing electricity for 25 years or longer. Most nuclear power plants have operating lifetimes of between 20 and 40 years. — Nuclear power plant ageing and life extension: Safety aspects An overview of issues and the IAEA’s symposium (1987

Most Nuclear Power Plants, in the United States, Have Lived Beyond Their Life Expectancy! Biden is Greenwashing Nuclear Corroding Plants Nuclear PowerPlants! Biden Launches $6 Billion Effort to Save Nuclear Power Plants, To Help Combat Climate Change The Biden administration is launching a $6 billion effort to rescue nuclear power plants at risk of closing, citing the need to continue nuclear energy as a carbon-free source of power that helps to combat climate change. A certification and bidding process opened Tuesday for a civil nuclear credit program that is intended to bail out financially distressed owners or operators of nuclear power reactors, the U.S. Department of Energy told The Associated Press exclusively, shortly before the official announcement. It’s the largest federal investment in saving financially distressed nuclear reactors.

The Collapse of Industrial Farming  The most upending event of the past 10,000 years is the advent of engineered food as fermentation farms displace factory farms. “We are on the Cusp of the Fastest, Deepest, Most Consequential Disruption of Agriculture in History.” (RethinkX.com).    “Modern foods will bankrupt the cattle industry within a decade.” (RethinkX).    More on that to follow, but first: Industrial farming, alongside global warming, ranks at the top of the list of existential risks this century. And, similar to the dangers attendant to excessive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, industrial farming is dangerously out of control, but in contrast to global warming, it is not followed at all by corporate media, begging the Orwellian question whether media other than corporate media truly exist?     All of which serves to highlight George Orwell’s concerns as expressed in his famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (Secker & Warburg Publishers, 1949) wherein he explained the primary consequences of “media manipulation” described as: (a) “loss of a critical thinking faculty” and (b) “diminished capacity for self-expression.”

Even As We See The Flaws In Our Food System We Aim To Force It on The World  Even before the war in Ukraine, the sanctions on Russia, and the shipping blockade of the Black Sea, farmers across the US were getting ready for higher prices on seed, fertilizer, and crop chemicals. All winter, major farm media was warning farmers to book supplies early as prices would be high and supplies would be short. The war in Ukraine has only amped up the concern among farmers, input suppliers, and those who erroneously proclaim that we, the US, must feed the world.     The farm media offers suggestions as to how farmers, despite relatively higher crop prices, might deal with the even steeper increase in input costs. Use less, get your old tillage equipment out or, heaven forbid, consider manually pulling weeds like farmers used to do—of course, years ago, farmers didn’t run thousands of acres.

Brazilian Meat Giant JBS a Bigger Emitter Than Italy, Study Estimates Campaigners say the company’s net zero pledge amounts to greenwashing in light of its spiralling emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions produced by JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, have surged more than 50 percent in the past five years as the company has acquired new poultry and livestock units — meaning it now has a larger climate footprint than Italy, according to a new study. The findings, published ahead of the Brazilian company’s annual general meeting on Friday, prompted renewed calls from climate campaigners for asset managers to divest from JBS – despite its pledge to hit net zero carbon emissions by 2040.

Civil Rights/Black Liberation:.

Living in Poverty: The First and Worst Hit by Pandemics of Every Sort Today, the poor live at the crossroads of injustice, hurt first and worst by the interlocking evils of climate change, militarism, and racism, as well as other forms of violence and inequality. The 54th anniversary of the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., just passed. Dr. King was shot down while organizing low-wage sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. At that time, he was building the Poor People’s Campaign, an effort to organize America’s poor into a force to be reckoned with. In his opposition to the Vietnam War and his promotion of a campaign to lift the load of poverty, he suggested that racism, poverty, and militarism could only be dealt with by uniting millions of poor people to change the very structure of our national life.

Labor:

Economy:

World: 

[Podcast] French Elections: Neither Macron, Nor Le Pen! The final round of the French presidential elections will be held on Sunday 24 April. The French electorate will be called upon to chose between Emmanuel Macron or Marine Le Pen – two sides of the same pro-boss, viciously anti-worker and reactionary capitalist coin! While the so-called leaders of the French left and trade union bureaucrats have capitulated to bourgeois pressure, calling for workers and youth to form a ‘Republican Front’ behind Macron to beat Le Pen, we say: neither one, nor the other!

Hungarian Election: Orbán’s Landslide Victory Against ‘Not Orbán’ Parliamentary elections were held in Hungary on 3 April 2022. Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party has won a supermajority for the fourth consecutive time. On this occasion, they won against an opposition that united a whole range of parties, from the right-wing Jobbik to the supposedly left-wing Socialist Party. While the opposition lost more than 800,000 voters compared to their combined vote in 2018, the far-right Mi Hazánk, founded in 2018 by former Jobbik politicians, entered parliament.   Only downwards. After three major electoral defeats, the opposition parties decided to join forces and run a single list, with common candidates for all the constituencies and the position of prime minister. The opposition alliance included a liberal bourgeois Party (Momentum); Two Centre-Left Parties; Two Green Parties; And the right-wing Jobbik.

Health, Education. and Wealfare:

The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who pass universal healthcare for  themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers to be,  a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People  Vote on Healthcare!  

WHO Warns Poor Nations Could Be Pushed to ‘End of the Queue’ for Pfizer Covid Pill “Do not let history repeat itself,” said the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a leading critic of global inequities in access to lifesaving medical tools. “Pfizer must expand the license with the Medicines Patent Pool to include all developing countries.” While strongly recommending the use of Paxlovid for high-risk Covid-19 patients who develop mild or moderate symptoms, the World Health Organization on Friday warned that without increasing testing access and the reach of generic production and consumption, the lifesaving medicine is likely to remain inaccessible in much of the Global South—replicating the injustice of vaccine apartheid. 

Company Responsible for Tainted Baby Formula Has Monopoly Over Aid Program Sales The current sole-source system allowing market monopolies within government aid programs puts babies at risk.